The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind

Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts

Daniel Pick

The story of how psychoanalysis was used in the struggle against Nazi Germany - told by a historian and practising psychoanalyst

Closely follows the British psychoanalytical interrogation of Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, following his bizarre capture in 1941

Weaves together Allied attempts to understand Hess and Hitler with the wider attempt to understand the pathology of Nazism and its hold over the German people

Shows how Freud's famous 'talking cure' was harnessed to the wartime needs of military intelligence

The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind

Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts

Daniel Pick

Description

The story of how psychoanalysis was used in the war against Nazi Germany - in the crucial quest to understand the Nazi mind.

Daniel Pick brings both the skills of the historian and the trained psychoanalyst to weave together the story of clinical encounters with leading Nazis and the Allies' broader interpretations of the Nazi high command and the mentality of the wider German public who supported them.

Following the bizarre capture of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess in 1941, Pick follows closely the story of how leading British psychiatrists assessed their new charge, in an attempt to understand both the man himself and the psychological bases of his Nazi convictions. At the same time, he uncovers the story of how a team of American officers working for the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, were engaged in an attempt to understand Hitler's personality from afar, using the theories and techniques of Sigmund Freud.

Drawing upon a large cache of archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Pick asks what such psychoanalytical and psychiatric investigations set out to do, showing how Freud's famous 'talking cure' was harnessed to the particular needs of military intelligence during the war and the task of post-war reconstruction that followed. Looking beyond this, he then shows just how deeply post-war Western understandings of how minds work and groups operate were influenced by these wartime attempts to interpret the psychopathology of Nazism.

The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind

Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts

Daniel Pick

Author Information

Daniel Pick, Professor of History, Birkbeck, University of London

Daniel Pick is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. An editor of History Workshop Journal, he is also a practising psychoanalyst and a fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He is the author of numerous works on European cultural history, including Svengali's Web: The Alien Enchanter in Modern Culture and, most recently, Rome or Death: The Obsessions of General Garibaldi, and he is currently preparing the volume on Psychoanalysis for the Very Short Introductions series.

The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind

Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts

Daniel Pick

Reviews and Awards

"In the last few years we have witnessed a growing historical interest in the contribution given by social sciences to the Allied war effort against Nazism. Daniel Picks book adds another fragment to this fascinating and controversial story." - Raffaele Laudani, War in History

"Pick, who is a psychoanalyst as well as a history professor, deserves credit for resurrecting such a neglected subject." - Andrew Lynch, Sunday Business Post

"A superb new book ... Pick, a distinguished historian of admirable breadth as well as a psychoanalyst, is the ideal author of such a study. His treatment of psychoanalysis is both historically framed and theoretically nuanced." - Paul Lerner, Times Literary Supplement

"This is a meticulous work of history and an impressive achievement." - New Statesman

"Unlike many spurious and sensationalist efforts on this subject, The Pursuit the Nazi Mind successfully shows how analysts at the time set out to make sense of the Nazi leadership's motives and actions, and crucially reveals how complex and puzzling their findings were to interpret." - Times Higher Education Supplement

"Picks book is a strong object"

"lesson about our own rootedness in the claims and politics of our age." - Sander L. Gilman, European History Quarterly 44(2)

"Pick's considerable achievement is to reach far beyond the study of Nazism to an extended meditation on different systems of thought and knowledge, and see how these are applied to man's search for meaning." - Frances Stonor Saunders, The Guardian